Michael Bolerjack An Icon for the Church on the Mercy of God

© 2012 Michael Bolerjack

For MARINELA We kept making love as the house burned down MB

An Icon for the Church on the Mercy of God You be like you ever, my beautiful one, my beloved, my Sabbath, my peace, my way to break the circle of God and Church and World, icon makers not iconoclasts, not idol worshippers, but in the twilight of the idols at high noon, in the midst of an error, we stood single, you and I, and did break it, did break the text, did step back, not out of the word, but out of all implication, by the prayer of the supplicate, the tare torn, debt cancelled, the call of tessera, pieces of a sweet life we loved it crazy, but not so: we did but live it. You were ripe and I was ready and we arrived, later. We heard our callings and we responded, choose us Lord, yes be taken. O my peace, yet you could not rest, and looked beyond, while I, a solitaire, a promontory, looked at you and saw the sadness of late tales, of tombs, of toil, of the undone. You were the passage, not the goal of it, and I passed through you, like the poet said, and I saw through you, not with you, and did arrive beside you, not as if to be. The icons came down, so that one could be built, strange, I did not know. I did not destroy them, but despite the theory of contradiction, when the thing denied itself, I denied it too. An icon now is, and you in it, and others too, if they will break the deadlock, and allow in their gratuity a freedom to God, to affirm all. Effracting God-Church-World, a system made on the bones of the infinite, by limit stand, ever, and be like you, come the Sabbath. I speak to you and to the world and to God all at the same time, and so make no sense to anyone, I ever the incomprehensible. And yes, not yet, even you, you did not understand, and the world I contradicted must not understand, or else I was wrong, but as long as God alone understands, the icon was not in vain, and I did not falter, pulled down vanity in myself first of all, and put back more than I took. God gave all, all must be returned. I give you all, for all of you.

At Harvest Time

I lay down my weary tune beside you sleeping

As you stirred and turned and almost not quite

Opened your eyes and almost not quite heard

Me whisper:

I finished, I finished.

By the banks of Marinela, by the sound of many

Sleeping, I did not hang up my heart, but sang it.

In memory of a forgotten Pope That God can thunder, And that God can whisper, That God can speak as a friend, Or as a stern Father, But that the beatific vision Is not so much the vision of God, That we see Him, But that He sees us, Always and everywhere, We may draw the deduction That we must go and do likewise, Which means not in reciprocity As one might think, With God or with each other, But speak to myself, View myself, As God does, And care.

All Souls Day My Lord, I would sing Thee, Of Your grace I would sing, Of mercy and love and kindness, And of the chastisement that Heals after correction. Of Thee I sing. Corrected, completed, Of Thee I sing. My Love, My Life, Yes, I did sing Thee. There was be-bop and hip-hop, And rock and soul between, And country and blues and gospel, All along the way, And many who sang, And many who knew not the words, Without sometimes a tune at all, Yet in the end You were sung, By one and all, Even when we knew it not. And amazing to me, Was the grace I found, Not only, that while I sang of Thee, yet, Lord, yes, You sang me.

Moral Epilogue

It is better to feel a desolation than a false consolation, but to receive

true consolation is the mercy and grace of God.

Remains:

The Perfect Number

God Alone Is Good.

God Alone Is.

God Alone.

God.

Fame of the Frame

We became en-framed by an other writtenness,

but in the tradition of the same, we became the frame-breakers.

This witness of the time of the King, was not counterfeited,

But counter-fitted, to join, to unite, to marry, to one.

If we suffer into truth, and if this frame is the cadaver of France,

Then over graves and over men and over lords we triumphed.

It is not the value for life which decides, nor death instincts,

But love alone, the body of God, what matters, His form.

The gibberish and jibbers of the solicitation of delights remind

Me of the conversion of Odilon Redon and his signatures,

Which dispersed darkness into light, and scattered light into

My darkness, so that at the point of no return, I turned.

Therefore, gold, yet silver, and every precious stone throne,

Cannot take the place of the dear little ones growing in you;

Words and things do not suffice, and we fall back on feeling,

And guess our way to freedom’s opening, gracious and given.

Nietzschean

The more we masked ourselves,

the less we mastered,

and enslaved,

Became an indefinable role,

The ones given lines

To stand in, not for

Recitation.

Brother Jacques

His:

Entombing,

Engraving,

Enframing

Enflaming:

Derrida did not die in vain,

For I remain: In session.

The Difference Between

Judgment and Criticism

If we will stand,

We’ll stand corrected.

Recovery

They asked my father, then, if your son kills,

will you cover for him?

And my Father replied, not only cover, but recover,

I for him.

Therefore, love is my alibi.

Critique

Epicriticism was not the separation of sheep from goats

Among the writers,

But the discernment of the touch of truth

In the feel of words and the heat of intent.

PM

Meta and Para made a map

Of all we could have been,

But for the territory.

The Seer

Little things to say,

Little time to say them,

No great thing left undone.

Thrown

That,

nothing will have taken place

but the place

(itself)

is the good of the tomb

that fell to Derrida.

Noble Truths

That,

things fall apart is

Gravity’s Law,

not mine,

for I have sakes

yet, and suns

to come.

The Path

Realization is, then, to make real?

No.

It is to be made real.

So,

You cannot realize yourself.

If you realize that,

You may yet be realized.

Liturgicam Authenticam

Kings kept keys,

Keepers kindly kept,

Keeping-in and

Keeping-out,

While Peter yet recoiled.

Where are you going?

he still asked.

To take your place,

God still replied.

Bunches

Views and reviews, visions and revisions,

And all you did for me:

Flowers,

for the asking never entered my mind.

Therese

A thousand violins,

No thing left to say:

Music in our minds,

Hearts I hear today.

Abstract French

He said,

And therefore there was one flower left unseen,

One flower yet to see,

That can never be seen

By any eye

Which still remains,

The still,

Life’s abstract

Florid bouquet,

Which was not,

Is not,

Will never have been,

But ideally,

Which was your reality and the nothingness,

Which yet said yes to thee.

Starred

Perhaps,

A constellation,

A scattered pattern,

Of lights and sighs,

A million-million miles away,

Perceived they say by our deception,

Yet revealed at night,

Alone,

Without celebrity,

In utter clarity,

Higher than known,

God’s poetic utterance,

A throwing and a throne

Shone.

Roman Holiday

God gives us saints

And they give us Him.

In the catholic economy,

Institutes rise and fall,

Rates fluctuate,

And coin becomes debased,

Yet His light reign

Gives us increase,

As Himself bestowed.

Scripture

Words and blows,

Less even lines,

Cried utterance

To the uttermost,

Deliberation

Liberating,

Delimitation

Known.

Confessors

Deconstruction dispelled

The incantatory escheatment of the

Versus, like:

In Freud’s lingered error,

Where it was, there I shall be:

Where it was, where will I be?

But to get to God,

Alone.

It mattered.

Did we think the act a stolen show?

Did we think it but a pair of dice thrown?

Back, back, back!

Our witness was a whiteness,

Testified,

Fired, smoked, ashed,

Cinders sent.

Yes!

Taints unsecreted,

Religion did not become us,

But the tomb.

Gift of Knowledge

Love of God and love for neighbor.

Life and all we meant.

To do, to be, to have, to make,

Was still but to be lent.

Kid

Boiled in his mother’s milk,

Broiled by his father’s sun,

The child took arms against.

Never, never, never:

Go back again.

Sisters resume, consume, exhume, exhale.

Brothers beheld, belied.

Be: trails, happy trials, be:

Let be: Yes, yet, still we will be:

Silence was not the rest,

Nor yet the play,

But the thing that works

Between.

The Virgin Martyrs

To do more than one can do

Is a flat contradiction,

So it must not be I that did.

While you smoke the cigarette,

The cigarette smokes you,

Almost not without a fire.

Joan of Arc amid her voices,

Telling her what to do; yet

It was Joan, Joan, ever Joaned,

Ever sainted, ever crowned,

Every girl who ever was,

A virgin to her wedded day.

Peace

God did not start,

God did not cease,

Yet the work is done.

Ye bastards:

Save it for your wives.

Rough bests the worst,

And to sea would I ride.

I have not yet begun,

I have already done,

For God in me still hides.

The birds will sing,

The night will chant,

As you and I abide.

Oppositions

The opposite of illumination

Is not darkness

But opinion.

The opposite of enlightenment

Is not ignorance

But insincerity.

The opposite of the good

Is not evil

But hypocrisy.

The opposite of being

Is not nothingness

But seeming-to-be.

The opposite of the finite

Is not the infinite

But the indeterminate.

The opposite of theism

Is not atheism

But money.

The opposite of life

Is not death

But sleep.

Be or not be.

Do not seem to be.

Because of the triangularity

Of existence, the way is not clear.

Lost in the delusion,

We see neither light nor dark.

Desire is delusion,

Delusion desires itself.

All self-direction,

All other-direction,

Is polarized, misses the mark.

Yet, one must shoot.

Flores de Monterrey Once I said, I knew not why, Petals to dirt, Stem to sky.

Pi Critic is Me We, wilderness-wed, wail-rode, form-finding, neither deferred nor deterred, denying death, and dying to desire, a way kings realized, along aside a brides production…she, all innocence, all absolutes, all wise, in relativity, he but blinded in the still blessing, allowing conscience’s benediction, she altogether really real and he but idealized, in the nihilistics, came the ring of grace, came death knells and kneeling at altars, given temptation, given grace, the mystery not known yet not to be denied, under the procession of the triumph of life, became the precession, the return, the shift of an axis or axle, bedded, abetted, but we connected, all in the whirl of turnings time, that is, of times stand still, still standing as the time arrived.